


Capital M-E (The Afters)

by envythenight



Series: Hunger Games [2]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 04:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1253170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/envythenight/pseuds/envythenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few moments from Jim's life, after the events in the arena.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Capital M-E (The Afters)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the only part of the story from Jim's perspective. If you want Jim's thoughts to remain unknown, you don't have to read. I was originally going to add this as a chapter to Here Comes The Sun, but it didn't feel quite right as it's sort of separate, given that Here Comes The Sun was very much John's point of view.

When Jim had pictured his victory, it had always been with him throwing down the body of his final victim and stepping forwards to claim his prize with a smug smirk.

His victory is nothing like he’d imagined.

He’s clutching John’s body to his own, wishing in some backward and unbroken part of his mind that he could cry, now that John’s gone. Because he feels so empty and useless inside and he doesn’t know how to get rid of it. He doesn’t need much, just a few small tears, to show John that he means more to Jim than he could ever know.

But he’s graced with nothing. Nothing but anger and bitterness at those who made this happen, who made it so that he finally found compassion and care for another human being and then tore it away from him.

When the hovercraft arrives, they try to pry John’s body from his fingers, but he snarls and snaps at them. They eventually give up and allow him to bring John’s body with him.

He just wants something tangible, something to show that he actually had the love of another human being once. He wants more than ever to bury his face in John’s shoulder, like he could rarely bring himself to do when John was alive. How he wishes he’d been able to let himself do that before because now it was too late. John will never be warmth and comfort again.

Jim will never experience that again. At least, not the way he needs it. All he will have is a gravestone, and perhaps not even that.

Jim swallows, and holds John more closely to him. 

 *****

They take the knife from him, even when Jim tries his hardest to keep it hidden. Presumably the Capitol is worried that he’ll attack someone with it, though Jim has honestly no idea who they think he would want to kill. Perhaps they think he’ll just go on a rampage, murdering anyone who crosses paths with him.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter, because he has wealth beyond what he could ever want, and he demands of any smith he can find that he get an exact replica, no matter what the cost is. The price is a hefty one, but he doesn’t bat an eyelid at the price, and soon the knife with the wolf’s face carved into the handle is in his grasp.

He hangs it above the fireplace in his house by the beach. No one ever visits him, so no one ever finds out that he looks to it every day, to remind himself of something very important.

In the Capitol’s eyes, the knife should have been used only for massacre, for slitting throats like they were warm butter. But in John’s hands, it had never touched blood.

So Jim reminds himself every day, that there is a darkness in him, something that sometimes feels like it almost consumes him, and that he had used it willingly in accordance with the Capitol’s wishes. But despite that, there was a person who saw not what was, but what could be, and he had seen that what could be did not always involve blood, and hate, and death.

Perhaps Jim would never do good. But he would never again play the Capitol’s games.

 *****

Out of nowhere, a small girl, about twelve or thirteen smashes into Jim and starts pounding her fists against him. If Jim wasn’t convinced that this was John’s little sister Harry, he would have made quick and brutal movements to remove her dirty hands from his suit.

“You killed John! You killed John!” she screams, her fists unclenching as she makes a movement to rake her nails down his front. Jim stops her easily by putting a palm to her forehead and holding her a few feet away, but that doesn’t stop her from swiping at him.

“You must be Harry,” he says, as softly as he can manage in his slight anger. His suit is dirty now. She glares at him and doesn’t reply. “Listen, Harry, I… I have a place back in district three, which is… too much space for one person and John wanted me to look after you and your father.”

“I hate you,” she hisses.

“The feeling’s mutual, dear,” he sneers, anger bleeding through. He closes his eyes for a second to recollect himself, and then opens then again. “I promised John I would look out for you.”

“He would _never_ want us to be near you!” she spits.

“I beg to differ,” he says through gritted teeth, god he hates kids, but he promised John and he’d like to not fail him just once. “Since he asked me to look after you. And I don’t know if you were watching, but he was perfectly content to be around me.”

“You tricked him,” she whispers, but she doesn’t sound confident.

“I did nothing of the sort.” He sighs. “I can’t force you to come with me but…” He pauses to work out how to phrase the next sentence so that he’s not lying. “I want to be of some use to John. If you don’t come with me, I can’t fulfil my promise.”

“You can rot in hell for all I care, along with your ‘promise’!” she snarls. “My da and me aren’t coming anywhere with you!”

Jim’s not stung by her rejection but he has a physical ache near his heart when he realises this means he’s failed John again. His hand goes to the hidden strip of fabric around his right wrist.

John deserved so much more than he got. It feels like all Jim ever did is let him down.

 *****

Jim can’t stand to watch sunsets. Sunsets cause all his sorrow and pain to rise to the surface of his thoughts, in a way he can’t control. And yet, every year, he sets out a special day to honour John by climbing to the top of the tallest building in district three and watching the sun sink below the horizon, wishing that John could be there with him.

He does it to feel close to John again. He scales the buildings of district three almost every day to feel a connection to John, but it’s not until pain slashes through him that he truly feels like he’s one with John. That’s how he feels human.

If someone had told him that not only would someone make him feel humanity and discover what true emotions felt like, but he would care for them for it, he would have cut them to ribbons for daring to say something so silly and blatantly untrue. Yet here he stands, not cursing John for giving his emotions depth they had never had before, but cursing the people who took that man away from him.

He’d often heard from people that love was painful, and so he’d done his best to bury it deep within his heart, especially with the bullying he received from peers. But then John looked into him and saw there was something more. The amazing thing about that was that Jim knew that John had never wanted to see more, yet he had seen it anyway. John had hated him, but his hatred had wavered as he realised that Jim was more than a ruthless killing machine. And every day, Jim grants himself a small portion of relief that when he’d met John face to face in the Games, he’d discovered he was interesting before he’d slit that boy’s throat. Perhaps living would have been easier if he had, but he would have never felt alive.

Love is pain. Jim knows that better than most.

 *****

If there’s one thing he hates John for, it’s that he can no longer get any pleasure from watching the Hunger Games. He can still give a nod to someone who makes a particularly inventive or genius kill, but he can’t laugh and clap his hands with glee as he used to.

John broke him. Or fixed him, he guesses, depending on how one looks at it.

“Mowwwww,” something purrs from behind him. He gives a small ‘hah’ of non-amusement, and turns around.

“There you are, Tiger,” he says gently. “Time for feeding, no? And Night… Looking thinner than usual…” The rest of the group look the same as always and he greets them one by one, “Shock, Circuit, Wire, Kitten, Pet.” The last two are all that remains from the first litter he picked up, back when he was less inventive with naming. They’re getting old, and Kitten’s a long way off from that stage of his life now.

Jim frowns. There’s a cat he doesn’t recognise, hanging back behind the group. It steps forwards shyly. In the light, its light brown fur catches the light and for a second it reminds him of something.

“You picked up someone new?” he asks the group. They purr in reply. “Well, lucky I now have plenty of food to spare for all of you.” He looks down at the ground and feels a twist in his gut. “Never have to go hungry again,” he murmurs.

He looks back across to the new cat, who blinks slowly back at him. The cat is unguarded in his presence for a moment, blind to any move Jim could make. He’s telling Jim he trusts him.

It reminds him of John, when he’d turned his back on Jim for the first time.

“You need a name don’t you?” he says softly. He pauses, then smiles and says, “I think I’ll call you… John.”

John purrs, and Jim feels a little lighter than he did before.

 *****

It’s a cold yet sunny day when Jim decides for the first time to watch the Games in the square with the rest of his pathetic district. Normally he watches at home alone, wallowing in sorrow that he didn’t know he could feel. But Katniss and Peeta’s ‘tragic’ storyline reminds him of his time in the arena with John too much, despite the knowledge that Katniss is ninety percent fake love, with the final ten percent being subconscious. But it reminds him enough that sitting at home alone makes him feel the onset of depression, and despite his hatred of district three, he thinks that maybe the surrounding public will make him able to lock those feelings away, if only for a little while.

It is with cold and withdrawn interest that he watches to see how their final moments will unfold. As the empty silence continues with Peeta and Katniss alone in the arena, he feels a dread well up inside of him. It comes to a head with the hurried words of Claudius Templesmith.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victors of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark!”

Silence falls across the district.

Jim can’t help it; a maniacal laughter bubbles up from inside of him. His laughter pierces through the silence in the square, infecting the district sheep with fear. They step away from him almost as one. His laughter grows louder. He has to hold his stomach because his laughter has started to hurt but he can’t stop. He puts a hand to his face and, though he keeps laughing, he’s shocked to discover that his fingers come away wet. Hardly able to breath, clutching his stomach, he looks up to the sky, but there’s not a hint of rain.

His laughter goes on.

Seven years. All it took was seven years. 

Seven years and he would have never lost the only man he could ever care about.  


End file.
